


Brother Torres is Dead

by AgentMal



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Erik's Childhood, Gen, Gil Scott-Heron, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 23:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20825228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMal/pseuds/AgentMal
Summary: Six year old Erik comes home to find his father listening to Gil Scott-Heron. What starts as catharsis for N'Jobu's despair ends up being his inspiration.





	Brother Torres is Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BabaTunji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabaTunji/gifts).

> Use of << >> indicates speech in another language.
> 
> Songs referenced (all by Gil Scott-Heron):  
[Jose Campos Torres](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYt2K6vacv0)  
[The Revolution Will Not Be Televised](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw)  
[Home Is Where The Hatred Is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vcfjIHdEX0)

The day after Micky’s dad died Erik came home to Baba in a mood again. He was slouched in the wicker chair, head back, staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing, smoke rising to the ceiling from the lit cigarette idly hanging between his fingers, music playing on Mom’s old record player. It was Gil Scott. One of the ones Baba always played when he was in this mood. _“I had said I wasn't going to write no more words down about people kicking us when we're down.”_ His father, whose face would be entirely neutral if it wasn’t so full of disgust, mouthed along with the words, perfectly in sync: _“About racist dogs that attack us and drive us down, drag us down and beat us down.”_

Erik sighed and slipped his backpack off his shoulder, dropping it by the door. Baba gave no indication he was aware of Erik coming in, but Erik knew he knew, just like Erik knew Baba wasn’t going to be sitting up anytime soon.

Erik went to the kitchen to start dinner.

As he quietly busied himself with getting things out, setting water on the stove to boil, the words of Gil Scott continued to pour over his ears.

_“The dogs are alive and the terror in our hearts has scarcely diminished. It has scarcely brought us the comfort we suspected/ The recognition of our terror and the screaming release of that recognition/ Has not removed the certainty of that knowledge -- how could it?”_

Baba insisted it wasn’t like this everywhere. He had been telling Erik stories of their homeland since he was a baby. Sometimes Erik believed it; sometimes he knew it was just another fairytale meant to coddle a child. Lately Erik resented such stories, such coddling. The other first graders all knew how it was, he didn’t need to be babied. Later in life Erik would come to understand that even in his birth nation it wasn’t normal for kids like him to be so universally aware so young, but at a wry 6 years him and his classmates had already seen enough to be jaded, to know to be wary of those they were “supposed” to trust.

In Wakanda, officers of the peace were universally and deservedly esteemed. Trusted. Icons of safety. So his Baba would say. But his Baba would also make sure to reiterate that here it was not so. “You must never let your guard down when you are out of the house,” his father would say.

_“The dogs are in the street,” said Gil Scott. “The dogs rabid foaming with the energy of their brutish ignorance/ Stride the city streets like robot gunslingers/ And spread death as night lamps flash crude reflections from gun butts and police shields.” _

Once things were in motion in the kitchen, just needing time, Erik filled a glass with water and took it over to put on the coffee table in front of Baba.

Without moving, still staring at nothing, Baba spoke, "<<Sometimes… sometimes I cannot deny that we should be doing more.>>" His father always spoke to him in Wakandan when no one else was there, and insisted he do likewise.

“<<I have spoken to your Uncle T’Chaka about it many times. We discussed it growing up, but I have also raised it with him since he was crowned king. It was important to me, even when it was merely abstract, but now…>>”

Erik just stood there, staring at his father. The record continued to play. 

“_ But the battlefield has oozed away from the stilted debates of semantics, beyond the questionable flexibility of primal screaming.” _

“<<Now, it is not just _ their _ story, the story of other people. It is my story. My friends, my wife, me, you.>>”

_ “The reality of our city, jungle streets and their Gestapos has become an attack on home, life, family and philosophy, total. _”

“<<We have such great power. Surely we must do more with it than simply hide ourselves.>>”

“But you—” 

“Ah, ah, ah!” Baba cut him off. “<<You know better.>>”

Erik switched into Wakandan, “<<But how is being here supposed to help hiding a place so far away?>>”

Now Baba sat up and considered Erik. 

“<<We sometimes supervise, passively, to monitor rising powers. But this mission _ is _ different, my son, yes. I made the case that we can be more specifically informed about the struggles of our brothers, even while maintaining the policy of nonintervention.>>” 

Erik noticed the last bit was said with undisguised disdain. On the record player, one song was ending and the next one was much more upbeat. 

Erik tested, “<<But we _ should _ intervene, shouldn’t we?>>”

Baba looked pleased, proud. “<<Yes, N’Jadaka. We should. I have been telling your uncle more and more urgently for years. For the powerful, inaction in the face of oppression is complicity.>>”

Funky jazz flute filled the apartment. “_ You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. _”

Erik looked up at his father, crestfallen. His father told him again and again that they were powerful, that his home was a place of amazing power and prosperity, beauty and happiness. Erik wished he believed it. Why would anyone with power choose to live here? Everyone around here knew that if you made good, you got out. And most kids loved stories where the main character discovered they were secret royalty. 

Baba was sinking into his musings again, gaze going distant. Erik went to go check on dinner. He cut up some fruit and brought that back out for eating until the grains on the stove and the chicken in the oven was done. 

His father was talking again, but less to Erik, more just thinking aloud, hardly more than muttering to himself. “<<It’s complicity. That’s what it is. Complicity. If we invaded Oakland tomorrow the most advanced weapons the Americans have could not repel us. If we had done so a decade ago we could have made the entire region unequivocally Wakandan territory. We could have overwritten this ‘turnaround world’, broken and erased every toxic institution, replaced the dogs in the street with true guardians of justice. Redford would still be alive, Micky would still have a father, N’Jadaka would still have a mother here. Had we the will we could do as much the whole world over. And here we wouldn’t even have to send soldiers, just arm the people here itching for their revolution. They are cowed only because they are overpowered, but they are not outnumbered. How many have I met who would rise up if they had even slightly more power to do so. Have known other who have risen up and only failed because they had not more power to do so...>>”

Alarmed, Erik quickly scrambled out of the way as Baba suddenly rose and started pacing. 

“<<What would be so wrong with that? We used to trade out spears to our neighbors, to help them repel their invaders, and then quietly fetch them all back after. Is it intervention when we’re simply loaning weapons so that others may better fight for themselves? Oh, my brother, how I know what you would say, how you would dismiss the idea as outlandish, the need as trivial. No explanation would convince you, no justification sufficient for what you are too cowardly to ever consider in good faith. My brother…>>”

Erik was deeply unnerved by his father’s behavior, at first, but now he was thinking as hard as he could about what his Baba was saying. Softly, cautiously, Erik said, “<<What if there was a different king?>>”

“<<Bah!>>” Baba, says dismissively with a toss of his hand, “<<The people, the council, would still hinder anything that wasn’t mired in established tradition. Traditions in which our care for our neighbors has only atrophied with time. The average citizen hardly knows about the struggles of us out here unless they’ve had a position like mine. A position none can mistakenly stumble into.>>”

Upset, and forgetting himself, Erik almost whines, “<<But you said home is _ perfect _!>>”

Baba pauses at that, then smiles apologetically, “<<Home is beautiful, and peaceful, and prosperous, and the people are lovely in many ways. But nothing in this world is perfect. Except for you and your mother.>>”

Me and my mother, Erik thought, and went to drag his backpack over and sit on the floor in front of the coffee table and do his homework. 

Song after song played and his father stared at Erik, stared at his hands, stared at the ceiling, stared at nothing. He occasionally spoke, and Erik looked up to him attentively when he did, then went back to doing his homework. When the record went to static Erik got up and turned it over. 

“_ A junkie walking through the twilight. _”

Sometimes when his father was sad, Erik would ask him to tell stories of home. It cheered him up as he told it. But that wouldn’t help now. This mood didn’t take his father often, but it happened enough that Erik knew what was good or not good to do.

“_ Home is filled with pain and it,/ Might not be such a bad idea if I never, never went home again _”

“<<Sometimes I think back to the attitudes of every well meaning soul who wished me well on my posting before I left and try to exorcise the _ rage _that comes with the knowledge that they would be all but indifferent to my reports of what has been done here.>>”

When Erik finished his own homework he got out his friend Mark’s. Mark was in third grade and didn’t like math, so Erik did it for Mark’s lunch money. His father approved, or at least didn’t stop him, always telling him he should learn more, learn ahead, and use it to his advantage. _ “<<Our craving knowledge, valuing knowledge from childhood is part of why Wakanda has more advanced technology than anywhere in the world,>>” _ he would say. 

And if his Baba thought about it when he was in a mood like this, he would despair that the largest enterprise undertaken with that knowledge was a magic shield over an entire secret city. Erik had heard it before.

Eventually the food was ready and Erik made up two plates and took them over. As he expected, he ate while his father ignored the food. Baba never ate when he got like this, but Erik still tried. 

After a time Erik went out to watch the older kids play bball in the makeshift court in the yard. He didn’t know it but that was the night his father decided to start working toward a new mission. In the days to come the Gil Scott would keep playing, but instead of pairing with this mood, his Baba would be energized. He went out more at night, started having serious people over for even more serious talk. None of it was hidden from Erik, who noted with great gravity and pride that his father trusted him with more information than anyone else, even Uncle James. 

He started to believe the stories when his father showed him Vibranium for the first time. His father showed him some of the properties, told him of the amazing uses.

“<<When we succeed, and the violence breaks out here, it won’t be long before they come. Using this in the fighting will expose my involvement. They will admit the rightness of it once it is past stopping, and then I will reveal you to them and take you home. You will live in safety as I oversee taking what we have done here to everywhere else.>>”

‘When we succeed,’ but they never did. Mere years later Erik would run home to discover he had been orphaned, and when word got around his father’s network dissolved. The people who had declared his Baba their brother vanished, abandoning their leader’s son. Erik never saw many of them again. Erik was left to fend for himself and fend he did, but not without making a mission of his own.

“_It's a turn around world where things are all too quickly turned around._”

It had certainly turned on him.

“_It's a turn around world where things are all too quickly turned around._”

So _he_ was going to turn it around. Or, like his Baba, he would die trying.


End file.
